The five performers in the Seventh Annual Young Artist Competition are (L to R) Nathanael Braun, Juliana Scofield, Mark Fu, Karissa Brath and Katelyn Sargent. Photo provided.
The five performers in the Seventh Annual Young Artist Competition are (L to R) Nathanael Braun, Juliana Scofield, Mark Fu, Karissa Brath and Katelyn Sargent. Photo provided.
Mark Fu, a junior at Culver Academies, won the Young Artist Competition Saturday with his performance of the first movement of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major. His accompanist was Sharon Burke.

In addition to winning the $500 Thomas N. Stirling Memorial Scholarship, Fu also won the privilege of playing his piece with the Symphony of the Lakes at the orchestra’s next concert on April 17 at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center on the Grace College campus.

Second place, and a $250 scholarship, went to Juliana Scofield, a homeschooled junior, who performed the first movement of Mozart’s violin concerto in G major. She was accompanied by Dr. Anthony Beer.

Third place, and a $150 scholarship, was won by Nathanael Braun, a ninth-grade homeschooled student from Elkhart. He played Dimitri Kabalevsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3, first movement, and was accompanied by Dr. Judie Meulink.

The Young Artist competition, now in its seventh year, was originated by the late Thomas Stirling, who was the music director for the Wagon Wheel Theatre and conductor of the Symphony of the Lakes. The competition is jointly sponsored by Symphony of the Lakes, Classic Arts, Grace College and the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts.

Next year’s competition, also scheduled for the Performing Arts Center at Warsaw Community High School, will be Feb. 12, 2022.

Additional contestants, each of whom received a certificate for their participation and valuable feedback from the judges, included Katelyn Sargent, a homeschooled 10th-grader, who played Daris Marianelli’s “Liz on Top of the World” on the piano; and Karissa Brath, a 10th-grader from Warsaw Community High School, who played the first movement of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto #1 in G minor.

Judges included Dr. Daniel Lin, an internationally-renowned pianist who teaches piano at Indiana Wesleyan University; Stephanie Patterson, who is the principal oboist with the Symphony of the Lakes; and Gert Kumi, a violinist graduate of Juilliard School of Music who teaches and directs the orchestra at Anderson University in Anderson.